Enhancing Situational Awareness for an Increasingly Complex World

Why does it matter?

The importance of having timely, accurate space situational awareness continues to grow as the world becomes increasingly dependent on space-based capabilities for everything from daily activities such as commercial air travel, weather, and agriculture to national defense such as missile warning, prevention of nuclear proliferation, and global monitoring.

“In today’s increasingly complex environments, however, situational awareness is also changing. It’s not enough to know what’s going on right now on the other side of that hill – users need to know what’s going on right now in 24 different locations,” says Vinny Sica, VP Ground Space Solutions. “Information is being pulled from satellites, from the internet, and from human intelligence. That’s what we call multi-INT integration; this is where we are investing our time money and effort.”

Knowledge of your surroundings doesn’t stop at the intelligence level; there are abundant uses on the ground in information technology. As an example, a recent contract will allow Lockheed Martin to exercise its network expertise for the United States Transportation Command’s program of record for in-transit visibility and the asset visibility system of record for the Defense Logistics Agency.

IGC integrates more than 950 transaction types from 67 external Dept. of Defense (DoD) transportation, logistics, and supply system interfaces and more than 250 commercial transportation carriers into a single integrated data model to provide complete, consistent, and authoritative data to the user base in near-real time.

From the ground, to the air, to space

Communications intelligence, signals intelligence and imagery intelligence are all needed by decision makers in active engagements, and another major application is across the Dept. of Defense. Lockheed Martin leads the Missile Defense National Team for the Command & Control, Battle Management, and Communications (C2BMC) system, which allows commanders to coordinate and plan a layered missile defense by linking regional, theater and national commands into a single network.

By linking globally deployed sensors, weapon systems, supporting elements’ fire control, and space-based infrared satellites, C2BMC provides an integrated picture of potential or current threats across the globe, allowing decision makers to collaboratively observe, decide, execute and assess a response using the full range of missile defense assets and capabilities.

“By developing complex systems such as C2BMC, that we have gained an extensive understanding of the needs of commanders and operators, as well as the expertise needed to deliver effective and secure command and control systems,” said Dr. Rob Smith, VP, C4ISR. “Our systems provide the ability to integrate for a common operating picture.”